He looked at me slyly. "Are you trying to provide for a spiritual after-life, which will manifest itself in your children and grandchildren?" He repeated my words with a touch of irony in the intonation. "And Herr Jonas Goldstuecker is to help you on to immortality?" "We haven't reached that point yet, Herr Eichelkatz," I answered laughing, rejoiced that I had made him think of other things. Without his noticing it, I turned the conversation upon my colleagues in the place, especially Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich. "I don't know the people of to-day very well, Herr Kreisphysikus. Since I gave up my business I haven't bothered myself much about them. The present Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich is the son of the Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich who was one of the trustees along with Dr. Krakauer. He studied at the same time as my son. And when Ehrlich had finished his course, he established himself here and took up his father's practice. He married and reached a position of prominence and wealth in the same place as his father, who has been dead ten years. If that's what you mean by after-life, Herr Doktor, then the old Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich actually does live on in his son. They say the son uses the very same prescriptions as his father. He's not a shining light; but he's a fine, respected man. I believe in time he was made trustee, like his father; and he has children, sons and daughters, who are a satisfaction to him. His oldest son is also studying medicine, and will probably some time take up his father's prescriptions and his practice. The old Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich was no shining light, and neither is his son, and I don't know the young one at all--but, at any rate, their light burns a long time, like a _Yom Kippur_ light, and in the Khille it may be said of this family: _Ehrlich waehrt am laengsten_." He smiled, and was pleased at his own little joke, and I for my part was glad to have left him in a better mood than I had found him. NOVEMBER 18.